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35 Arab L.Q. 74 (2020-2021)
The Typewritten Market: Shari'ah-Compliance and Securitisation in the Law of Islamic Finance

handle is hein.journals/arablq35 and id is 74 raw text is: ARAB LAW QUARTERLY 35 (2021) 74-91 Arab Law BRILL Quarterly N IJ H O F F brill.com/alq The Typewritten Market: Shari'ah-Compliance and Securitisation in the Law of Islamic Finance Valentino Cattelan Saudi-Spanish Center for Islamic Economics and Finance, Madrid, Spain cattelanvalentino@libero.it Abstract By taking inspiration from Wislawa Szymborska's poetry and Brinkley Messick's schol- arship, this article interprets the law of Islamic finance as evidence of a radical shift in the social anthropology of Islamic law from classical to contemporary times. To this aim it highlights the changes from figh in medieval trade (where individual actions were judged according to rules legitimised by their own local context) to the current process of Shari'ah-compliance, arguing that this process belongs to a textual polity where standardised certificates, contracts and securities have replaced actual social relations in the global financial market. In the light of this, the article advances the no- tion of Typewritten Market to depict the nature of Islamic finance as a socio-economic space embodying a 'de-materialised Sariah': that is to say, a meaning of Islamic law whose contemporary time belongs more to legal/financial technology rather than to Muslim human action. Keywords Islamic finance - Shari'ah-compliance - Islamic law - anthropology - ariah -figh © KONINKLIJKE BRILL NV, LEIDEN, 2020 DOI:10.1163/15730255-BJA10051